Sci Fi & Fantasy / Three Months in a Juice Tank
Three Months in a Juice Tank
It had rained recently, but not enough to wash away the filth from the narrow streets. I was glad for the neural blockers that protected what remained of my olfactory senses as the rotting wet stench competed with the pollution washed from the rooftops and the smell of the cooking from the gas powered handcarts. A Bolivian lady, heavy, weather-beaten and toothless cried her ‘choco con casa’ in direct competition with a Thai family murdering squid on a stick. None of them called to me as I trudged past the stalls.
Pushing aside a rainbow curtain of plastic streamers I entered a Pizza Hut. The surly kid behind the counter did a double take when he bothered to look up from his porno mag. I get that a lot. I ordered a small pizza. Takeaway.
‘What sort you want?’
‘Fuck I care. Surprise me.’
A rusty, wall-mounted, fan did little to disperse the humidity, just pushed it round the room. I closed my eyes while I waited for the pizza. Reviewed what I knew one more time…
…Photos on my desk, The Ulcer laying them out for me with a snap like a straight flush. The Grandmother, a stately lady in her seventies; the change, photo by photo. First the nose, then the lips and tits and finally the big one. The synthetic skin, smooth like a babies.
Three months in a juice tank, pumped full of Modafinal and Donepezil. Some people change, they come to like it, to want more. But sometimes what they want has changed.
The final portrait photo unrecognisable, a beautiful young woman, all except for the eyes. Nothing the skinners can do about the milky look of age in the eyes. Nothing legal anyway. But once the change has come, that hardly matters.
‘Pizza’s ready.’
The kid scanned my wrist and an ancient printer on the counter clattered out a receipt, which I waved away. I walked back the way I’d come through the thinning crowd hurrying through the dusk. This district wasn’t safe anytime, but it was less so after dark.
The gloomy lobby of the Chelsea Hotel was deserted except for the doorman. My glare quelled the challenge rising in his throat like bile.
I took the stairs. The threadbare carpet doing a piss-poor job of muscling out the protesting squeaks of the aged boards.
Room 402, I stopped in front of it. The thought of the final photo keeping my fist hanging two inches from the door…
…a grainy black and white from the security camera from Granny’s mansion. The thing that had been Granny caught forever in the still image. Grinning at the camera, the granddaughter bundled in a cloak, terrified, gripped tightly under a sinewy arm, rippling with tendons and capped by ferocious talons; talons that had disembowelled two security guards and a Doberman.
The parents, naturally, had freaked. Happens all the time, but these parents had the clout to do something about it. Pressure was applied and shit flowed down hill, right into The Ulcer’s office, and from there into mine; like all the shit jobs.
Granny was off the radar by this time. Holed up with the granddaughter, buckets of meds and a growing hunger. Did what was left of her try to fight, screaming in the disconnected brain tissue at the horror she’d become?
She made the call. Just like I knew she would.
I’d caught Doc Horror Day (my own joke) bundling himself into a taxi with bags of hurriedly packed Skinner paraphernalia. A disgraced Skinner with his own line in perversion he was let to operate with some autonomy. Fewer of his patients ended up in landfill or naked and chasing people through the streets with meataxes. But he’d picked the wrong client this time.
‘Where is she?’
I’d held his hand in my own. His delicate brown fingers manicured and barely shaking from the booze, or the fear.
‘Where’s who?’
I started squeezing, hearing first the crack, then the grinding of the bones over his screams.
The Chelsea. Room 402.
The sun’s final red ray refracted, somehow, through the grime of the window of the open room behind me. Dust motes swirled golden red around the clenched fingers of my raised fist. The world held its breath.
I knocked.
‘Pizza.’
Heartbeat.
‘Door’s open.’ A woman’s voice, soft and seductive.
Not the argument I’d expected. I knew she could smell the pizza, probably from two flights down.
I dropped the pizza and drew my revolver with one hand while turning the loose, dented handle with the other. I pushed open the door and, in the dying light, stepped into room 402.
The room was shrouded in dark. I could hear the slight whir of my lenses opening in the microsecond in which my eyes hesitated between thermal and low-light imaging. I knew I was expected; that bastard in the lobby.
The room flared white and the staccato beat of slugs tore across my chest like a murderous sewing machine, spinning me around, striking the flesh of my gun arm which I felt go numb. Then she was on me.
The force of Granny’s impact drove me right through the wall back out into the hall in a shower of plaster and splinters. Talons clawed at my torso and legs, shredding the flesh and tearing at the armoured hydraulics beneath. My systems were shrieking alarms, but they’d given me enough time to get my working hand to her neck. It bulged with incredible strength and ferocity, but was all too biological.
My bronze fingers closed with unflinching, mechanical force.
Crack.
Her dead weight collapsed on top of me.
Heartbeat.
My circuits closed down for a while, concentrating my system on staunching the blood flow from my biologicals.
I floated.
I came too. The Ulcer was staring down at me.
‘You got her.’
I tried to swallow.
‘The girl?’
The Ulcer stared down the hallway, like he was a little confused as to how he got here.
‘Granny wanted her eyes for herself. She did a proper job. Skinners are re-attaching them now. She should be fine.’
He kept staring down the hall like it was a golden highway out of here; I knew I was headed for the juice tank again. Maybe the thought of saving the girl would keep me sane in the darkness; if I even was sane.
Hope, like the bubbling juice of the tank, springs eternal.
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I had to go over this story twice to get a clearer vision of the story (although I’m not 100% sure). Perhaps you should clear it up a bit. That part about the was just one of the confusing parts.
“The thought of the final… from the door”
I would also suggest making it clear earlier in the story that the protagonist was a cyborg and perhaps his name (if he has one).
Overall you’ve got a brilliant story (once I understood it) of bad things that could happen in the future. Although I’m still not 100% sure of the purpose of the juice tank.
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My all time favourite film is Blade Runner so I really love this piece.
Your dialogue flows really well, I like hearing his inner thoughts.
One thing I didn’t get; who the Ulcer is, although every thing seemed pretty clear and didn’t lack any detail.
Excellent stuff! Dark, even noir Chandleresque for the 22nd century. I’m a fan. It got a 9 it would have been a 10 but for:
The very first paragraph – it is much weaker IMHO than the rest – work on that and you have a sure-fire winner.
Cut down the sentence length it is too passive; get that description into the staccato gritty style and you are done.
Impressive writing.
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